The first month of the new year is over – and email marketing campaigns continue to be a massively leveraged and converting marketing channel.
It’s cost-effective, personal, and highly engaging (if you’re doing it right🫣).
But getting your email campaign to drive those coveted results needs more than just hitting “send” after smacking whatever ChatGPT gave you into the template you thought looked the best.
So, let’s dive into what it means to create high-converting email campaigns that deliver measurable success (can you tell I’m shoving keywords in here? Say no♥️)
What We're Covering in our Step-by-Step on Email Marketing Campaigns
We’re starting at the beginning, and audiences are the beginning of any marketing effort, so feel free to skip if you’ve already read enough about understanding audiences.
Understand Your Audience
The foundation of any successful email marketing campaign is knowing your audience.
You want to make sure you’re using the right messaging in each email depending on the kind of email recipient.
Cold emails are different from emails sent to existing customers which are different from your general newsletter emails which are different from… etc.
Without understanding who you’re speaking to and what kind of email you’re writing, your messages risk falling flat and getting dumped in spam folders and promotion tabs.
Start by identifying your target audience and segmenting your email list.
Here’s how you do it:
Create some buyer personas, including demographics, interests, pain points, and the solutions your business offers to handle those client problems.
Use data from past campaigns or analytics tools to understand customer behavior.
No data? No problem – it’s 2025, go on over to whatever AI tool you’re currently crushing on the most and ask it for help – ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot… You’ve got options and all you need to do is pick one to start building the persona.
When you know your audience, you can tailor your emails to address their specific needs and challenges.
Define Clear Goals for Your Email Marketing Campaign
“Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction” – John F. Kennedy
He wasn’t talking about emails (Imagine😂), but this quote applies all the same.
Every email campaign needs a purpose.
Whether it’s driving traffic to your website, promoting a new product, or building brand awareness, having clear goals will keep your campaign focused.
Here’s a system businesses have adopted since 1981 for you to make more of an impact with your marketing efforts (and marketing courage).
Set SMART goals:
Specific: What are you trying to get out of your campaign? Do you want to generate 50 new leads, sell 50 units of a product, or are you introducing a shiny new rock as a pet?
Measurable: Can you track success? You need to be able to tell how close, or not close, you’re getting to your specific goal. Consider tracking links clicks and emails opens for example.
Achievable: Is your goal realistic? Don’t set a bar that’s too high that you can only fail and don’t set it too low just to pat yourself on the back. Consider your audience size and budget.
Relevant: Is sending out email marketing campaigns really in-line with your business objectives? Consider your company’s strategy and understand if sending your email campaigns out now is actually relevant to your current quarterly/yearly goals.
Time-bound: How long are you going to be doing this for? Forever doesn’t work. You’re not going to be sending the same campaign out to the same people over and over again (unless you’re trying to get blocked). So, define a timeline to run your email campaign.
Having well-defined goals ensures every aspect of your email marketing supports your larger objectives.
Build a Quality Email List
Your email list will have a massive impact on your campaign’s success – it’s the audience you need to understand.
The best thing you can do is to find ways to have people opt in to be emailed so you can start pushing campaigns to people who have given you their emails.
Here are some 3 ways you can grow your list:
- Offer lead magnets like eBooks, discounts, or free trials in exchange for email addresses.
- Use pop-up forms on your website or landing pages to capture leads. It could be for the above mentioned lead magnets, or for free merch with your brand on it. Hubspot and ReadyDig are good examples to look at.
- Run social media ads promoting exclusive offers for subscribers.
Avoid purchasing email lists if you can, as they can lead to low engagement rates and potential penalties.
Keep that for cold touchpoint experts: The Sales Team.
Craft Compelling Email Content
This seems self-explanatory, but this is what’ll really define your ability to drive engagement.
Write attention-grabbing subject lines, interest-piquing preview text, and polished email bodies with powerful closing CTAs.
People read your headline 5 times as much as your body copy. David Ogilvy has a line that says “When you have written your headline, you have spent beauty cents out of your dollar.” That was 80 years ago – before email and increasingly crowded inboxes.
So make sure every piece of your email is as best as it can be because you’ll have your headline (20% of your email) getting people to your body copy (80% of your email) which will get people to convert (100% of your goal).
You need every element to grab your reader’s attention and keep it moving where you want it – as defined by your goal.
Here are some examples for you:
- Subject Lines & Preview Text: Create intrigue with personalization or urgency: “John, Ready to Save 20% Today?”.
- Body Content: Be concise and focus on the value you’re providing. Use storytelling to make the content relatable. (and Grammarly to help keep it short).
- CTA: Make it clear and action-oriented: “Shop Now,” “Claim Your Offer”.
Well-written content grabs attention and drives action.
Optimize Design and Layout
Surprise! (not really). Your email’s design plays a crucial role in whether recipients engage with your content.
Different email types will, and should, look different. A newsletter is going to have its own look and feel that a product email or a support email.
Newsletters are going to be more designed and structured; product emails are going to focus on the products that are being marketed and built around showcasing them within the email, and support emails are going to have little to no design to focus the touchpoint on the support being provided.
So, let’s take a look at some email marketing best practices for email design that you can spread across any of your campaigns:
- Use responsive design to ensure compatibility across devices. PC, mobile or tablet, it needs to be easily read and interacted with on any device.
- Incorporate your brand colors and logo for consistency. Keep signatures on-brand as well.
- Break up text with visuals and white space to improve readability. You don’t want to go through a wall of text, so don’t send any out.
A visually appealing email enhances user experience and keeps your audience engaged. It increases the likelihood your email will be read and helps structure your body copy too.
Timing Is Everything
Timing can make or break your email campaign. Send an email at the wrong time, and it might get buried in your recipient’s inbox.
How to time it right:
Use analytics to identify when your audience is most active. Keep track of when your recording the most opens.
Here are some tips:
- For B2B campaigns, consider sending emails during business hours. 🤯
- For B2C, evenings or weekends may work better.
A/B test different times to see when your audience is spending time in their inbox.
Test, Analyze, and Optimize Your Email Marketing Campaigns
Regular testing and optimization are essential to improving performance of your email marketing campaigns over time:
- More intriguing subject lines and preview texts mean more opens.
- More engaging email bodies mean better engagement and more conversions.
- More impactful and clearer CTAs also mean more conversions.
Here are some strats for you (because I know you like them):
- Run A/B tests for subject lines, CTAs, and layouts. Don’t test time when your testing different email copy and visuals.
- Monitor metrics like open rates, click-through rates (CTR), and conversion rates. Keep track of email success for easier decision-making (because email vibes aren’t enough).
- Build automated journeys and send them to yourself. If you’re happy with how often an email comes into your inbox and how it looks when you get it, you’ll also be more comfortable sending it out.
In case it wasn’t clear, the strategies come down to testing, tracking, measuring, analyzing, and optimizing.
Spend some time here to get the return you’re looking for.
Leverage Automation Tools For Email Marketing
Automation tools streamline your email marketing efforts, saving you time while increasing personalization.
Create something massively complex with Zapier and ChatGPT (probably don’t though, but that’s just me).
Subscribe to a tool like Mailchimp or get a CRM with email journeys you can edit like HubSpot or High Level (I like this is better).
Automating your email marketing campaigns will give you the needed time to test and optimize for conversions.
Most, (if not all) tools come with design templates you can leverage early on to make email creation easier and expose you to different types of email structures.
Use them until you get used to what emails with different goals can and should look like (for your audience).
Here are some use cases where automation can help your business:
- Welcome series for new subscribers to your online platform.
- Abandoned cart reminders and promos for e-commerce sites.
- Purchase follow-ups or inquiries letting you focus on delivering your product/service.
Automation makes it easy to track and measure your campaigns.
Avoid Common Mistakes
Even with the best intentions, mistakes can happen.
Avoiding these pitfalls ensures your campaigns remain effective:
- Don’t overload emails with too much information. A surefire way to find yourself sending out blocks of text people will only ignore.
- Don’t use spammy subject lines and spam-triggering keywords. These deter clicks and send your email away from the eyes of your potential customers.
- Ignoring unsubscribe requests or failing to comply with data privacy laws. You could get your domain blacklisted and hurt your brand’s reputation.
By staying aware, you can maintain a positive reputation and productive interactions with your audience.
You’re Ready To Create Your Email Marketing Campaign
Creating high-converting email campaigns doesn’t have to be overwhelming.
Understand your audience, set clear goals, and optimize your approach to create campaigns that deliver real results.
Small business owner or seasoned marketer, these steps will help you launch email marketing campaigns that deliver the results you’re after.
Still unsure how to start?
Book some time with us and let’s talk about what you’re looking to achieve with your email marketing effort.
